Admob start pissing me off...

ilan

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i know this topic was discussed a lot but lately i am very disappointed from admob. i tried many other ad frameworks 3-4 years ago and ended up using admob because it gave me the highest revenue. in the last 4 month there is a big difference between the revenue i see in my admob dashboard and what i am getting to my bank account. i am talking about 20-25% less money is coming in. in the dashboard it says "invalid traffic" so i checked and i found that invalid traffic includes: like accidental clicks or admob was not able to charge the costumer that ordered the ads so i understand if that happens 1 month but 4 months in a row?? just to be clear i always saw invalid traffic but it was around 2-3% of the revenue not 20-25%. i tried to contact admob but it seems like there is no such company because all you can do is ask the community. wtf is that? i want to ask someone that works there why i am getting a 20-25% cut of my revenue?

so i am thinking now to try another ad framework. what would you guys recommend? who is not working with admob and using another framework where he is happy with the revenue?
what options do we have on b4x (b4a+b4i)?

thanx
 

tufanv

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I spent my life trying different networks. My advice is don't try other networks, you will end up with admob. Earnings, fill rates are a disaster on other networks. Not being able to contact anyone is a real problem.
 

ilan

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I spent my life trying different networks. My advice is don't try other networks, you will end up with admob. Earnings, fill rates are a disaster on other networks. Not being able to contact anyone is a real problem.
i also had the same experience. i tired several times to switch to another company and always returned to admob, i just thought maybe something has changed since then but it seems that admob is ruling the game and they do what ever they want. you cannot do anything against them. the take 20-30% of your income for "invalid traffic" without explaining what app, which ad unit, how to fix it. nothing and you also have no one to ask. it is frustrating. we spend so much time on creating apps and update them and but in the end we all are slaves of big companies like google and apple.

i think the only solution is to start a business and look for costumers. this is something i will try to focus on.
 

ilan

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tufanv

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By the way, my invalid traffic rate is below %0.1. Meta earnings are really good but I don’t use it because you can’t opt out for video ads in interstitial ads which users hate.
 

ilan

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By the way, my invalid traffic rate is below %0.1
😞

the problem is that i dont have any information why my invalid traffic rate is so high. i believe that if i would have an issue with my ad unit admob would have informed me about that. but this is not the case. and 4 months ago everything was fine. i almost got the same amount i saw in the dashboard but now it is around 20-25% less.

this sucks 😡
at least they could tell me what is the reason and i would fix it if it was on my side.
 

ilan

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ok after making some calculations and looking at the income and payments i found this.

from 02/2014 - 02/2022 i had around 1.2% invalid traffic (8 years)
from 03/2022 - 01/2023 i had 12% invalid traffic (11 months)

what has changed in the last year that i got so much invalid traffic? something is really strange here.
 

tufanv

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ok after making some calculations and looking at the income and payments i found this.

from 02/2014 - 02/2022 i had around 1.2% invalid traffic (8 years)
from 03/2022 - 01/2023 i had 12% invalid traffic (11 months)

what has changed in the last year that i got so much invalid traffic? something is really strange here.
Did you change banner positions since 03/22?
 

tufanv

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i have not change anything, my banners are always on top of the screen. should i change something?
no, if it was always the same, it mustn't be that. According to my adsense (not admob) experience
1) too many referrals from social media
2) excessive ad clicks from countries famous by cyber attacks like north korea, vietnam etc causes that. I didn't experience it in admob.
 

Firebase

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Can someone share what revenue you can expect from including Admob in an app? Is the ad revenue calculated on how long the user has the app open (e.g. how many ads they see) or is it based on how many downloads occur from the Google/Apple app stores?

My app, when finished, will have a free version that's limited in scope and the paid premium version; I'm inclined to display ads only in the free version.

Thanks!
 

ilan

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Can someone share what revenue you can expect from including Admob in an app? Is the ad revenue calculated on how long the user has the app open (e.g. how many ads they see) or is it based on how many downloads occur from the Google/Apple app stores?

My app, when finished, will have a free version that's limited in scope and the paid premium version; I'm inclined to display ads only in the free version.

Thanks!
you get paid for people seeing your ads (very low amount) or clicking on the ad (depends on the advertiser/country/etc..)
 

RichardN

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I registered with AdMob back in early B4A days and released a couple of apps to test the likely results of more popular distributions. The results were poor but above all the lack of transparency in hits versus revenue persuaded me that it was to be avoided.

If you have an addicitive game with 100k+ installs you may be happy with the somewhat questionable results from AdMob. After my experience I decided to go for the outright purchase app model and have never looked back.
 

Firebase

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With so many apps today displaying ads - which to me are incredibly annoying, out of principle I'm NEVER going to buy anything from such an ad - I figured that there must be a healthy benefit to the developer.
 

Computersmith64

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I registered with AdMob back in early B4A days and released a couple of apps to test the likely results of more popular distributions. The results were poor but above all the lack of transparency in hits versus revenue persuaded me that it was to be avoided.

If you have an addicitive game with 100k+ installs you may be happy with the somewhat questionable results from AdMob. After my experience I decided to go for the outright purchase app model and have never looked back.
I've made a pretty decent living from AdMob since 2014. In that time my apps have had ~150M ad impressions, so it's definitely a numbers game, but if you have an app with a reasonable number of DAU (Daily Active Users) you can make good money. Revenue definitely goes up & down, but even an app with around 5,000 DAU can make a couple of hundred $ per day - depending on where the majority of your users are based. If your user base is mostly in countries like the US, UK & EU countries you'll get higher revenue. When I advertise my apps these days I always exclude poorer countries because even though I can get big install numbers from those countries, I'll never get a return on the $ spent on advertising because the in-app ad revenue from them will be almost non-existent. Also, I figured out pretty quickly that banner ads are a complete waste of time (unless you have tens of thousands of DAU), so I always use interstitials & sometimes native ads. Rewarded ads have comparatively high revenue, but you need rewards that will entice users to look at them.

@ilan - FWIW my invalid traffic rate is around 1%.
@angel_ to see invalid traffic go to the Payments section of your AdMob account.

- Colin.
 
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